Harry Potter and the Long Distance of Murder
by Willard Wolfe
Summary: Two years before he went to Hogwarts, Harry Potter came across a mysterious book in his school library. This book would change his life forever, but not through the kind of magic he would soon grow used to. [Locked-Room Mystery]


_Small note: This story was uploaded up to chapter 5 in another account, but I happened to lose my password, so I'm re-posting it here. I have chapters 6 to 8 written already, so I'll post those as soon as I finish reposting the other five chapters. Sorry for the inconvenience. _

* * *

Since he remembered, Harry's reading habits had been very light. The idea of losing himself within a world different from his own, as his teachers promised him reading would allow him to, seemed very appealing. But Harry could never quite get into any books. It wasn't that they were too difficult for him to understand―he was almost ten and could read any of his school books without much difficulty.

It was just hard to get excited about anything when you lived with the Dursleys. Harry's only living family, they sucked out the fun from everything. It always seemed like it was going to rain even when the sun was bright outside. Besides, the Dursleys would never buy Harry anything, not even books. Harry knew to separate good days, when the Dursleys didn't do anything bad to him, from days that would never happen, when the Dursleys would do something nice for him.

Despite(or perhaps because of) the clear impossibility, he couldn't help but daydreams that the Dursleys would acknowledge him a bit more, that they would not only stop yelling at him, but say nice things to him. Harry knew that they weren't very fair to him, but they were all he had. Sometimes he wondered if it was his fault, if he was really as bad as they said he was. He asked them multiple times about how he could change, but his Aunt Petunia always answered his question the same way: by explaining he was born a freak and nothing he did could change that. But even so, he still caught himself thinking about what he could do to change their opinions.

One of those times happened while he was in class.

"Does anyone want to volunteer to help me organize our books after class? Ah, how about you Harry?" she asked kindly at Harry, who had been staring out of the window. The other students, who didn't like him, giggled.

"I would love to," he said, trying to pretend he was paying attention, though it was obvious to everyone he wasn't. "But my family―they wouldn't like if I... ." Harry trailed off, hoping he didn't have to explain much.

"Then how about this?" his teacher asked. "You and I will go organize the books right now, and Lara will take over the rest of the class. How does that sound?"

Lara, the teacher in training, nodded enthusiastically at the notion of having a class all for herself. Harry didn't really have a saying on whether he wanted to help or not. Two minutes later, he was at the library helping his teacher organize the books before the term ended in four days. Placing books in their respective shelves wasn't hard, nor was it annoying when compared to the tasks the Dursleys made him do. For his lack of complaining, his teacher had a lot of shallow praises.

"You are a very good helper. Maybe I should ask you to help me more often," she said. Harry didn't reply. Then, with urgency in her tone, "Catch it!"

Harry noticed a book he had hastily put back on its shelf start to slide off of it. Harry had always had a keen instinct for catching objects, something that would one day be very useful when he started to play Quiddich, even if at that moment he still had no idea the sport even existed. His abilities would have allowed to catch the book before it fell and put it back on its shelf nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a hundred.

This was the thousandth time. The book slipped through Harry's fingers and it fell on the ground. He knelt down to pick up the book, and stopped himself to stare at the cover for a moment, sitting―though at the time he did not know―on the brink of his fate. His first glance was discouraging, for it portrayed what Harry had assumed to be a love a story. _A Scandal in Bohemia _was printed in large, friendly letters. Underneath it, there were a few other titles, suggesting that there was more than one story in the book.

"Are you interested in the book, Harry?" asked his teacher, kindly.

"What?" he answered, surprised. How long had he stared at the cover for? "No―yes―I mean... ." Harry wasn't sure what to say. Would his teacher get angry if he said he wasn't interested in the book?

His teacher giggled. She gently picked the book off the ground and handed it to Harry. "Since you helped me organize our new books, why don't you keep this one for a while?"

"I...thank you," said Harry, not wanting his teacher to get angry.

When the day ended, he hid his book inside his bag as well as he could(what if the Dursleys didn't approve of him having a book to read?) and headed home. It was with an uneasy heart that he ate dinner. He wasn't used to having something to look forward to, even if only vaguely. Aunt Petunia seemed to have noticed this, and was sure to try to punish him for his positive mood by giving him less food than normal. Harry didn't complain.

That night, when Harry was inside his cupboard, he didn't know what compelled him to struggle with a flashlight he had borrowed from his teacher to read through the first story in the book. But he did read it, and once he had done so, he felt strangely interested. It had been an interesting story, but he wasn't hooked yet. It happened when he glanced at the next story's title.

_The Red-Headed League. _That strange, almost bizarre combination of words skewered the mind of the nine-year old Harry Potter like nothing had been able to before, and opened the gates the Dursleys had worked so hard to keep it locked―the one that hid all of his excitement. Harry glanced down at the other titles. _The Man with the Twisted Lip,_ _The Adventure of the Speckled Band._ A sense of exhilaration Harry couldn't quite explain went through his head. Before he knew it, he had finished the entire book. He didn't know how long it took him to read it, but he didn't care.

If Harry slept at all, he simply went from one world of dreams to another. The next day, he came up to his teacher and asked if there were more books from the same author. The teacher, delighted, took him to the school library and helped him take as many books by that author as he could carry. Harry couldn't keep the books forever, of course, but he read them so often he had them practically memorized by the time he gave them back. He was obsessed with them.

Vernon Dursley wasn't an ideal role model. For the longest time, all Harry had as a role model was a vague idea of being as unlike the Dursleys as it was possible for him to be. He thought it was a little pathetic, but he had finally found an example to follow in the book he had just read. He met, for the first time in his short life, even if only in fiction, someone he wanted to be like. Someone who was clever and just―but not to a fault. Perfect in his imperfection, that man became the role model Harry never had.

That man who was so excessively tall he seemed even thinner than he already was. His face as flat―yet just as sharp―as a blade and his nose similar to the animal with eyes as acute as his, the hawk. The curved pipe, the deerstalker(which Harry would later discover he did not actually wear outside the book covers save for one story). The manner he moved around the room to get his magnificent brain functioning and then sunk his head against his chest to lose himself within his thoughts. The seemingly insane, yet overwhelmingly methodical way he examined a crime scene. His razor-sharp wit. His loyalty to the queen proclaimed with bullet holes on the wall, his musical talent proclaimed by his violin. And that figure that disappeared within the fog of nineteenth century London, with some nine-year old boy who had read about his adventures running after his dashing, shadowy figure, fighting against all odds...Harry had met Sherlock Holmes.

* * *

The change was immediate, but Harry doubted the Dursleys ever noticed it. They never paid attention to him if they could at all avoid. Harry became more confident, more sarcastic―or at least as sarcastic as a nine-year old could be. The biggest change in him was that their words didn't hurt him as much as they did before. They didn't make him doubt himself. Every time they sneered and mocked him, Harry, in the corner of his mind, asked himself what Holmes would think of that situation. That always helped him to make it all bearable.

The Dursleys could no longer trap him within a life of infinite boredom. It didn't matter if they didn't buy him anything, let him watch TV, or do anything fun. Whenever they tried to lock him in meaningless tasks, he found refugee in his mind. He practiced the art of deduction as often as he could. In the books, Sherlock had explained it, and Watson had elaborated on it, giving Harry a fairly good understanding of what it was supposed to be. Like an exact science, a person's clothes and habits would give you an accurate picture of what that person did the day before, perhaps even years before.

Of course, Harry wasn't as good as Sherlock. He was ten-years old now, but he still made many mistakes when trying to apply the art of deduction to people he knew. Once, he had mistakenly believed that Dursley had gotten mud on his shirt from a fight, when he had actually just tripped and fell. It was very hard to separate coincidence from fact. But he still did manage to deduce that Aunt Petunia had hurt her neck by trying to spy on the neighbors something she punished him for, assuming he had done some "freaky business."

If the art of deduction was a "freaky business" as she referred to it, then he didn't mind being a freak. He didn't know for how long he would model himself after Holmes, but he was sure that he would remain a fan of his for his entire life. There was something in his methods that gave reason to the most chaotic, irrational things in life. Harry needed those reasons to remain happy. Everyone who came in contact with the Dursleys did.

"Get the mail, Harry," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper. He did not attempt to hide his ever growing contempt at Harry. He never did.

Harry didn't argue with him. He had learned, from observing his behavior, that the easiest way to live with the Dursleys was to obey them without saying a word. He learned to ignore his feelings, or at least to hide them. It was clear that Holmes thought that feelings interfered with rationality, but he did display them numerous times. So it was fine to have feelings, just not to let them interfere with your reasoning. Because of that, every time he felt like replying to the Dursleys, he kept his feelings under control.

The mail was a bit different from the usual. A postcard, a bill, and a letter to Harry.

Harry bit his lip. He couldn't let any sort of emotion show on his face. Many different reactions flashed through his mind, until he found one that was the most likely to succeed in the long run and decided to run with it. He slipped his envelope under his cupboard, then, without showing any sign of emotion, he returned to the breakfast table. The Dursleys didn't notice anything.

But inside his mind, Harry was excited beyond belief. Who could have sent him a letter? They knew he lived in a cupboard too, which further limited the list of potential senders. He had no idea who could have sent him a letter. Against his better judgement, with a tone as pathetic as he could muster, "Any letters for me?"

"Letters? For you?" Uncle Vernon laughed, seemingly amused at the idea, as he read through the mail Harry had picked up. "Who would want to talk to you? Nobody, that's who!" He laughed once more good measure.

Harry repressed a smirk. The Dursleys had no idea who would ever want to talk to him. That made the letter he received even more mysterious. Or to put it more accurately, Vernon Dursley did not know who would send him a letter. Harry caught the shadow of a concern showing on Aunt Petunia's fingers, gripping at her glass of water slightly harder than she should have. Was she even aware of her reaction? Harry observed her actions carefully. She frowned, apparently disliking what she thought. Then, she shook her head, indicating she was trying to stop thinking about something.

"What?" she asked, once she noticed Harry's stare.

"Nothing," he hurried to say. "I'm sorry."

She grumbled and went back to eating breakfast. That was a mistake. Harry needed to look at her for too long to deduce something out of her actions. Holmes could do it in a single glance. More importantly, he couldn't be sure of how accurate his deductions were. Guessing―no, deducing what people were thinking was one of Holmes' most impressive skills. Maybe Harry was overestimating himself. Holmes noted it was important to measure your own skills accurately.

With a sigh, he decided to wait until night to think further about the letter. It was a capital mistake to theorize before having all the facts. The important thing was to act normal and don't let the Dursleys notice he had received a letter, they would most likely confiscate it if they found out about it.

* * *

It was a similar feeling to when he first discovered that old book that contained the Holmes stories. For some reason he couldn't quite explain, he felt a sense of wonder and curiosity directed towards the envelope that nearly swallowed him whole. And that was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be swallowed whole, by the excitement of an adventure.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE_

_(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

_Dear Mr. Potter,_

_We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

_Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Minerva McGonagall,_

_Deputy Headmistress_

Harry must have read the letter a thousand times. It was absolutely ridiculous. The only reason he gave it more than a passing thought was because the notion of someone, _anyone _wanting to talk to him seemed almost just as absurd. He tried to look for other ways to interpret the words relating to magic, as if it was a code, but failed to find any sort of reasonable meaning in them.

What if wizard referred to a member of some sort of weird cult? Harry didn't know much about cults, in fact he wasn't quite sure what a cult really did, but he had heard Uncle Vernon talk about them disdainfully many times. Maybe his parents were part of a cult. That would explain why the Dursleys hated them, and Harry as well. Now that he thought about it, it didn't really make sense that his parents died in a car accident and Harry somehow survived unscratched with only a scar, did it? What if something relating to this cult explained...no, nothing quite explained it.

_HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

_UNIFORM_

_First-year students will require:_

_1. Three sets of plain work robes (black)_

_2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear_

_3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)_

This was harder to explain away as being part of a cult. The list went on about books and equipment a wizard should have. It seemed far too specific to be a metaphor. The possibilities remaining were simple, though hard to test. The letter could be a prank, it could be a code, or it could be taken at face value.

It didn't seem like a prank. It seemed too carefully planned to have been one. The Dursleys would never waste that much time to make his life miserable, and Harry couldn't imagine anyone he knew(mostly because he didn't know anyone) playing a prank on him. Harry included the chance that someone was simply insane and believed to be telling the truth. He didn't know much about what made a crazy person crazy, so he skipped that option as he did not having enough data to form a theory on it.

It didn't seem like a secret code, although a code that doesn't look like a code is what every secret code should aim to be like. The only problem is that if it was written in code, then Harry should have been able to understand it without any help, which he certainly couldn't. If he needed help from the Dursleys, then there was no reason to send a letter hidden in a code. The main reason one would use a secret code when writing a letter to him would be to get it past the Dursleys. No, it did not make sense either.

Then Harry was left with the ridiculous option that the letter should be taken at face value. Maybe he really was a wizard. Holmes usually expressed disbelief toward the supernatural, but he had once said very clearly that if all options were exhausted, then it was logical to accept the supernatural explanation. The tricky thing, Harry thought, would be to find out when he had exhausted all other options. When would he have known that he had exhausted all that was impossible, leaving him with the improbable answer?

Picking up a broken pencil, Harry wrote out a quick response on the envelope.

_Dear Professor McGonagall,_

_I would be happy to be part of the school, but I frankly have never heard anything about wizards. Could you please explain the subject in a bit more detail to me?_

_-Harry Potter_

It seemed extremely silly once he read it, but he couldn't quite discount the thought just yet. The feeling of adventure overwhelmed his sense of rationality―something Holmes frowned upon, but that Harry hadn't been able to quite master yet. This was his first real adventure. It would take a lot more practice before being able to master his excitement.

Without thinking, without even breathing, Harry sneaked out of his cupboard. What time was it? Three in the morning? It didn't matter. He turned the doorknob, trying to be as silent as possible. Then, he stepped outside the house.

What was he supposed to do now? Send the letter by mail? That sounded awfully unlikely. If magic existed, then they surely had a way to communicate outside of normal mail. They should even know that Harry was ready to answer their letter. They awaited his owl. What did that even mean?'

"Is owl code for something?" Harry asked himself.

At that moment, an owl came crashing down the skies and landed just on top of the Dursleys mail box. Harry's first reaction was to look back to make sure that hadn't woken up any of them.

His second reaction was to turn his head sideways, much like the owl did, then, sarcastically, "Well, _of course!"_

The owl took off without warning. There were many conclusions he could draw from what had just happened, but Harry didn't allow himself to draw any of them. There wasn't enough information yet. And he wouldn't commit a capital mistake.

Still, what mattered the most to him wasn't the possibility that something completely unreasonable was happening in front of him. If his perception of reality was wrong, then he would just have to change it. No, what kept him smiling as he went back to the cupboard inside the room was something far less rational, far less logical. Harry just thought that regardless of how this turned out, regardless of whether it was the work of a crazy person or if magic really existed, he would soon experience the adventure of a lifetime.

This adventure―though Harry did not know at the time―would be one filled with wonder, mystery and murder.


End file.
